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A Glance at S 
European and American 
Vocational Schools 




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Designs made by pupils in the Trade School for Girls, Rue du Marais, 

Brussels, 



A Glance 
at 

Some European and American 
Vocational Schools 

FOR 

Children from Twelve to Sixteen Years of Age 



Published by 

The Consumers' League of Connecticut 

Hartford, 191 i 



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A Glance at Some European and American 

Vocational Schools for Children Between 

12 and 1 6 Years of Age. 



The Result of an Investigation of Some Schools in Germany, Bel- 
gium, Holland, England, and the United States, Made 
by the Consumers' League of Connecticut, 
September 1909-Februray 1910. 

The reasons that led to a study of the opportunities 
for vocational training offered to children from twelve to 
sixteen years of age are of so great significance and to the 
general public so little known, that a consideration of 
them is given first by way of introduction to this paper. 

We have regarded our overcrowded high schools and 
the rapidly growing number of our grammar schools with 
true American pride in our educational advantages, and 
have remained in ignorance of the fact that sixty-nine and 
one-half per cent, of all the children who enter the 
lower grades of our grammar schools in Connecticut have 
disappeared by the end of the sixth grade. Where are 
they? Some have been retarded and may still be found 



THE NEED OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING 

in the lower grades from which they will never advance, 
but the great majority have reached the age of fourteen 
and have left school from whatever grade they may hap- 
pen to have reached. It is no exaggeration to say that 
hordes of children have been leaving school to take up 
their life work with little or no knowledge of reading . 

and writing and practically none of arithmetic. 

The statistics furnished us by the compelling agent ' 

who enforces the state child-labor law in the district in 
which the cities of Hartford and New Britain are located 
show that 634 out of 1,078 applicants for working cer- 
tificates from September i, 1909 to May i, 1910 were 
foreign-born. It is these children who are a menace to 
the integrity of our state, arriving as they do generally 
with not enough schooling to enable them to enter the 
grades where they belong by virtue of their years. They 
are misfits who are a clog upon the classes in which they , 

are placed; they are ashamed of their size and their ig- I 

norance, and are eager to leave school. To the needs of 
these children who form by far the largest proportion 
of our young workers, our educational system has paid 
almost no attention. Yet every sentiment of humanity 
and every reason of expediency should urge us to make 
special provision for them, born as they are of ignorant 
and impoverished aliens, yet now the foster children of 
our state, and soon to become a large part of its govern- 
ing body. 

The large withdrawal of American-born children from 
the fifth and sixth grades of our schools and the still 



THE NEED OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING 

larger withdrawal of foreign-born children from school, 
irrespective of grade, is due in most cases not to the 
need of increased earnings for the poor family, as many 
suppose, but in at least eighty per cent, of the cases to the 
failure of the school to hold the child. The sons and 
daughters of the ignorant laborer with no tradition of 
education behind them and with no comprehension of its 
industrial value, become restless under the book-learning 
of the school at the age when the rapid development of 
the powers begins and the period of ripening activity 
sets in. For most children this is at the age of twelve 
years. 

Probably no period of life is more valuable for educa- 
tional purposes than the period from twelve to sixteen 
years; it is the time when the memory is most retentive, 
the reason becoming vigorous, and the powers of com- 
prehension suddenly illuminated. And no period is in 
general so worthless for productivity in the industrial 
world as this. This fact is abundantly proved by the 
large number of boys of fourteen and fifteen years of age, 
who float about from one factory to another with long 
intervening periods of idleness, who cannot hold a po- 
sition more than a few weeks at most. Seventy per cent, 
of all the boys who actually get work in our factories is 
probably a fair estimate to make of these floaters ; yet 
these same boys who tire alike of the drudgery of the 
school and the monotony of factory life, inattentive stud- 
ents and irresponsible workers, these same boys are not 
incapable of untiring application where their interests are 
aroused, and a vent for their superfluous energy supplied 

5 



THE NEED OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING 

them. It is at this point that society, powerful and en- 
lightened, should step in, and should assume the respons- 
ibility for the proper education of the uninformed and 
heedless child. 

For the ignorant boy of fourteen who leaves school 
to spend the greater part of his time for the next few 
years in casual employment, there is but one future pos- 
sible. He must eventually enter the ranks of the unskilled 
day-laborer who gets no training in efficiency. A con- 
siderable body of statistics is now available to prove that 
he never develops a high wage-earning capacity. There 
is for him neither money nor promotion; his wife must 
face a depressing, life-long struggle ; and his children will 
be deprived of what we in America regard our most sacred 
right, opportunity. Carefully gathered statistics in the 
state of Massachusetts report that four out of every five 
children in that state who leave school at the age of four- 
teen enter casual or unskilled employment. 

It is in the interests of these helpless children of the 
poor, who will in their turn become the progenitors of 
another hapless generation, that the Consumers' League 
of Connecticut has undertaken to stimulate an interest in 
providing courses in vocational training in our grammar 
schools. 

The aim of this paper is not to discuss systems and 
details of technical training, — for what they should be is 
a problem for the schoolmen to solve, — but rather to 
put into the hands of the general reader a presentation 
of the problem itself and of the efforts being made in 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

some countries to meet it, the scope and present stage of 
development of these efforts. For in our country it is 
not the schools that have initiated educational reforms, 
but the urgent call of the people. 

The problem for Connecticut is briefly this : 
How shall our school work be so planned that a child 
may be fitted to enter a trade, commercial life, or domes- 
tic employment, his training beginning at the age when 
tastes begin to differentiate, yet not be deprived before 
he is fourteen of the possibility of going into and through 
a secondary school and entering college? 

And how may subjects be so chosen and taught in our 
trade schools that we may graduate men and women not 
workers only? 

Germany. 
Germany was the first government as a government 
to appreciate the value of industrial training in the schools 
to the industrial development of the nation, and to ac- 
cept the fact that the child who leaves school at four- 
teen loses much of what he has acquired in the first eight 
years of school life. To secure to every boy, therefore, 
a permanent benefit from his early schooling, and to make 
of him a valuable factor in the achievement of her com- 
mercial ambitions, the imperial government of Germany 
enacted a law that any communale may establish contin- 
uation schools (Fortbildungsschulen) and may compel 
boys betvt^een fourteen and eighteen years of age to attend 
them four or six hours a week at company expense, i. e. 
with no deduction from their wages. A government bill 



THE NEED OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING 

is now pending to extend this law to include girls between 
fourteen and eighteen years of age. The hours are gen- 
erally given as off-time in the day, because it has been 
found that boys who do school work at night do not ac- 
complish so much in the factory. 

Before entering a continuation school, a boy must 
have spent eight years in a Volkschule or public gram- 
mar school at which the attendance is obligatory. A 
parent upon entering his child at the Volkschule at the 
age of six years chooses between the Bezirksschule, at 
which a very small tuition fee is paid, merely nominal, 
and the Burgerschule at which a considerable fee is 
charged. Although the teachers are the same and the 
subjects taught are the same, a dividing line is in this 
way drawn at the very outset between the children of 
the well-to-do and the children of the poor. It is this 
class discrimination, however abhorrent it may be to the 
spirit of American democracy, that renders the question 
of trade instruction in the schools so simple in Germany. 
The boy who is placed in the Burgerschule may after a 
few years leave this school to enter a higher classical or 
scientific school which prepares for the University, such as 
the Gymnasium or Realschule. The boy who completes 
eight years in the Volkschule and who leaves the public 
school at the age of fourteen to take up a trade or voca- 
tion has open to him a choice ^mong three schools: the 
Fortbildungsschule which offers a general course for 
artisans, the Fachschule which offers artisans a special 
course in a given trade only, and a trade school which 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

begins at the same place as the Fachschule but carries the 
boy farther along. Those who leave the trade school may 
and often do become artisans, but are prepared also to 
advance higher according to their character and ability. 
This is the scheme in Saxony, and is similar in the main 
to that in other German principalities. 

The Prussian Continuation School. 

The Prussian continuation schools are all planned after 
the same model, and a description of one will suffice to 
give a good idea of all in this kingdom. The following 
facts are contributed from the continuation school at 
Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin. This school provides 
a course of six hours a week for three years to boys from 
fourteen to seventeen years of age. The six hours may 
be divided between two days or may be placed all in one 
day, but always include two hours of drawing. In the 
evening elective courses are offered. 

The subjects taught are the same for all boys: 

I bookkeeping, business correspondence, and labor 

laws. 

II German composition, the exercises relating to 

the work, as for example the duties of an 
apprentice. 

III arithmetic, the examples relating to the trades, 

as for instance the cost of the manufacture of 
a given machine, the cost to a day-laborer of 
an illness of a given number of weeks. 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

IV technology: 

(a) lighting, heating, the hygiene of the 

workshop, etc. 

(b) tool and machine study. 

(c) the study of materials, their origin, 

cost, etc. 

V citizenship. 

VI drawing, specialized trade drawing from the 

start. 

When more time is possible, practical work in a school 
workshop is given. The school workshop is to be pre- 
ferred to a factory workshop because the manufacturer 
uses the machine only and naturally thinks of his product 
and not the boy. In the school workshop, handwork 
only is required of the boy for some months before he is 
taught the use of machinery, on the principle that only 
by doing handwork does one come to appreciate the value 
and possibilities of the machine. The factory gives a 
one-sided training only, whereas the school should give 
the boy a glance over the whole subject with which he is 
dealing. For example, to a boy who expects to set panes 
of glass, some knowledge of artistic glass work should be 
given, a study of color and composition and the history 
of stained glass windows. 

The principle underlying the Prussian continuation 
school system is a twofold one and may be expressed in 
the two words, Kenntniss and Specializirung, understand- 
ing and specialization. 



lO 



vocational schools in germany 

Saxony. 

Many principalities have enacted more stringent com- 
pulsory education laws for minors over fourteen years of 
age than the Empire. In Saxony, where industrial edu- 
cation has reached a remarkable development, the law 
requires that all boys between fourteen and seventeen 
years of age who are at work shall attend school eight 
hours a week in a continuation school, four out of the 
eight hours being given up to drawing. 

A brief description of the trade schools of Dresden 
for such boys will give an idea of the extent of the de- 
velopment of industrial training in Saxony. These schools 
include city trade schools for boys and for girls (Stadtische- 
Gewerbeschulen) ; guild schools (Innungsschulen) for 
barbers and friseurs, carpenters, bookbinders, butchers, 
cooks, tinkers, and shoemakers ; compulsory guild schools 
(Zwang-Innungsschulen) for bookbinders, painters, con- 
fectioners and pastry cooks, chimney sweeps, blacksmiths, 
upholsterers, joiners; association schools (Vereinschulen) 
for hotel boys, druggists, typewriters, horticulturists, etc. ; 
commercial schools; music, singing, and theater schools; 
art schools for photographers, decorators, etc. ; schools of 
housekeeping ; schools for tailors, dressmakers, and seams- 
tresses. 

The city trade school for boys (a Fach- und Fort- 
bildungsschule) gives instruction from 8 a. m. to 2 p. m. 
six days in the week, and assigns home work so that 
pupils cannot work in the factories at the same time. A 
boy who attends this school for a full year need not there- 



TI 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

after attend a continuation school, since thirty-six hours 
a week of instruction for a year is more than an equiv- 
alent for eight hours a week for three years. Almost no 
shopwork is given here; the boys have already had prac- 
tice in simple handwork in a carefully graded course in 
the Volkschule, and it is thought more profitable that 
they should give much time to drawing and to the study 
of subjects relating to the trades, such as mathematics, 
bookkeeping, labor laws, shop and personal hygiene, etc. 
In the day school, those who take kindred subjects are 
grouped together in classes: 

(a) bakers, butchers, waiters, cooks, etc. 

(b) carpenters, joiners, masons, tinkers, etc. 

(c) machinists, mechanicians, locksmiths, etc. 

The requirements for admission to the day school are the 
completion of eight years in the Volkschule, a knowledge 
of what is taught in the middle grades of the Volkschule, 
and good moral character. In the evening and Sunday 
school, advanced work is given in mathematics, language, 
the sciences of physics and chemistry, and drawing both 
free-hand and mechanical. 

A guild school (Innungsschule) is a kind of co- 
operative school in which the employers are interested. 
The boys who attend a guild school are exempt from at- 
tendance at a continuation school. Through the courtesy 
of the directors an interesting study was made of a number 
of these schools. 



12 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

The school for chimney-sweeps in Dresden is a com- 
pulsory guild school (Zwangs-Innungsschule) for the rea- 
son that there are only thirty master-sweeps in the city. 
A Zwangsinnung may be formed when enough employ- 
ers desire it and yet when at the same time there is need 
of the help of all the employers to pay the expense of 
running the school. When an Innung is very large, it is 
not usually compulsory. All the master-sweeps in the 
city are compelled to belong to this Innung. 

Those who sleep during the most exhilarating hours 
of the day know little of the fascinations of the life of 
the chimney-sweep. Up early in the morning and above 
the city when the rest are asleep, he is through at noon 
and dressed up clean with a holiday for the rest of the 
day. He has work all the year around; he is used to all 
weathers and never has colds. There are not many acci- 
dents and master-sweeps get good pay, four or five thou- 
sand marks a year. Sweeps are given a course in ethics, 
because, working as they do entirely without supervision, 
nobody ever knowing whether their work is well done 
or not, they need to develop a sense of responsibility and 
to be taught the value of faithful service for its own sake. 
Their vocational instruction includes a little of physics and 
chemistry, a study of heat and the heat values of differ- 
ent fuels, of gas, smoke, soot, draughts, and the effect 
upon the draught of the different heights of a chimney, 
kinds of chimneys and stoves, the effect of winds and 
moisture, the need of air and the effect of too little or 
too much, the use of the first air (to burn up the gas), 



13 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

and of the second air (which must be regulated and passed 
through the right place). The lessons are illustrated by 
a large number of models of houses, factory chimneys, etc. 

The school for butcher boys in Dresden (an Innungs- 
schule), is entirely supported by an association of butchers. 
Those butchers who do not belong to the Innung must 
permit their boys to go to the continuation school. The 
school session is from 2 to 6 p. m. once a week, 40 weeks 
in the year, for three years. Boys in this trade are ex- 
cused from the four hours of drawing a week which is 
required in the continuation school. There are one hun- 
dred and fifty boys in this school, and four teachers are 
regularly employed besides the director and a physician 
who gives an occasional lecture. 

The boys learn a great number of things under the 
head of geography and composition: the coinage of all 
countries and rates of exchange, tariff laws, pure food laws, 
how to sterilize milk and meat, what diseases render 
animals unfit for food, what use may be made of a tuber- 
culous cow (it may be sent to the oil factories), the use 
and commercial value of all parts of the animal (e. g. a 
thorough study is made of all kinds of leather), the marks 
of age in an animal, the proper ingredients of sausages 
and the adulterants forbidden by law. A powerful micro- 
scope is owned and used by the school, but bacteriology 
is not studied since no science is taught. 

A few of the class questions will give an idea of the 
character of the instruction which is always practical : 

How many swine in Germany? 

14 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

What are the characteristics of the German swine? 
What are the characteristics of other swine? 
In what principaHty were EngHsh swine first intro- 
duced? 
Why? 

How many sheep in Germany? 
From where are they imported? 

In the teaching of arithmetic and bookkeeping, the 
school is helped by the co-operation of the employers. 
Each boy reports every week the number of swine, sheep, 
etc., purchased by the firm for which he works, what was 
paid for each consignment, etc. The trade instruction is 
divided into four parts: 

(i) practice with slaughtering apparatus upon 
wooden models, 

(2) slaughtering of swine, 

(3) instruction in the first care of the wounded, 

(4) excursions to slaughter-houses, 

cowmarkets, 

waterworks, 

veterinary establishments, 

blood-utilization establishments, 

milk-sterilization establishments. 

An interesting example of a Vereinschule is the 
school for hotel boys in Dresden, which has two sessions 
a week, Mondays and Fridays from 3.30 to 6.30 p. m. 
All of the boys in this school learn French and English, 

15 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

business composition, round handwriting, bookkeeping 
for restaurants and hotels, calculations in the coinage of 
all nations, rates of exchange, the use of checks and 
drafts, a little of political economy and law. In addition 
the boys are divided into two classes of cooks and wait- 
ers, the cooks to be taught a knowledge of all kinds of 
fish and meat, and the waiters of all kinds of liquors. 

A few questions asked in a class of waiters when beer 
was under discussion will again give an idea of the prac- 
tical nature of the instruction: 

Where in Germany are the headquarters of the manu- 
facture of beer? 

What cities in Bavaria have extensive breweries? 

Where is the largest brewery in the world? 

What are the component parts of beer? 

What is done first with the barley? 

Why is it carefully sorted? 

What would be the effect upon the beer if unripe 
kernels were used ? If imperfect ones were used ? 

What is done next? 

What would be the effect if the grains were not 
washed clean? 

What is the necessary temperature for brewing? 

What method of heating is necessary? 

Why cannot a fire underneath the vat be used? 

and so on through the whole process of manufacture, the 
reasons for the use of sugar and malt, and the necessity 
for killing the germ. The interest of the boys in the 

i6 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

study of this subject was quite marked. Practice in cook- 
ing is not given here, because there is in Dresden a 
cooking school for men. 

One cannot but admire the spirit of the employers 
of Dresden, who have voluntarily formed themselves 
into guilds and associations to contribute to the special 
instruction of apprentices who in the majority of cases 
do not remain in their employ, but go to all parts of 
Germany and even to foreign countries. When inquiry 
was repeatedly made into their main motive, the reply 
was " to raise the standing of the calling." Moreover, 
these guild schools give the employers a chance to inter- 
est themselves in the choice of teachers and the trade 
instruction of their apprentices without seeming to in- 
terfere with the work of the schoolmen, who may in 
many cases not understand the needs of their apprentices 
so well as they do themselves. 

This co-operation of employers appeared very marked 
in the guild school for bookbinders. In connection with 
this school it is interesting to note that, although there 
are many applicants for admission, only the best are ad- 
mitted for the reason that those who have no special 
aptitude for the work, no appreciation of color and de- 
sign, are sure to fail and must eventually take up some 
other subject. 

Bavaria. 

The Bavarian system of industrial training has been 
given its present form by Dr. George Kerschensteiner 



17 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

of Munich, the most widely recognized authority on 
industrial education to-day, who holds the position of 
Schulrat and royal Schulkommissar in Bavaria. Al- 
though in all essential points, the school systems in the 
different principalities are agreed, there are certain pe- 
culiarities in the Bavarian system which it is interesting 
to note by way of comparison. 

In the Prussian type of continuation school, confined 
as it is to six hours of instruction a week, no place is 
given to shopwork. But nearly every continuation 
school in Munich combines with study handwork also 
in a school workshop (Fachliche Fortbildungsschulen.) 
The value of the school workshop is placed high, on the 
ground that boys who work only in a factory workshop 
do not see so clearly the relation of their study in the 
school to their work in the factory, are more or less 
indifferent to study, and do not get the full benefit of 
their schooling. 

The law in Bavaria does not fix the number of hours 
of attendance upon the school, but the Schulrat has been 
permitted to determine the number of hours in the differ- 
ent schools by the necessities of the different trades. 
As might be expected, there is more elasticity in the 
arrangement and required number of hours. Appren- 
tices in some trades must attend school nine hours a 
week, ten months in the year, for four years; that is, up 
to the eighteenth birthday, full advantage being taken 
of the law of the Empire as to the maximum age for 
compulsory attendance. In some other trades, only 

i8 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

three years of school attendance is required of the boys, 
and the number of hours per week varies from four to 
thirteen. 

The main motive which makes itself felt through 
Kerschensteiner's whole plan of industrial education is 
to teach the boy to understand his subject, to understand 
the materials and objects with which he is dealing. 
Kennen-lernen, the illumination of the understanding, 
is the magic key which will open the door to individual 
efficiency and to national growth. The writer begs leave 
to digress a moment here to compare what seems to 
be our American motive in education with this German 
motive. For it may be that in the midst of our national 
rush and competition, out of the very exigencies of our 
situation, we have laid hold upon a more forceful though 
not more noble motive. It is to teach our children to 
think for themselves, the girl as well as the boy, the 
child in the lower grades as well as the college student. 
By the combination of these two motives, Kennen-lernen, 
the illumination of the understanding through knowledge, 
and Denken-lernen, the power of independent thought, 
the true aim of all education will surely some time be 
reached. 

To resume our subject, in the city of Munich fifty-six 
trades are taught in Fachliche Fortbildungsschulen, and 
there are also in the city thirteen Bezirksfortbildungs- 
schulen, or continuation schools, for those who have 
completed eight years in the Bezirksschule, and who do 
not wish instruction in a special trade or are specially ex- 



19 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

cused from attendance upon the Fachliche Fortbildungs- 
schulen. Instruction in these schools covers two years 
with eight hours a week of schooling. The subjects 
taught are: 

Religion, 

Reading and composition, 

Arithmetic (accounts), 

Hygiene and citizenship, 

Handwork in wood and iron, with drawing, 

Gymnastics and swimming. 

Vocational Training for Girls. 

Although, as has been said, attendance upon school is 
not yet compulsory for girls after the age of fourteen 
years in Germany, nevertheless many trade schools have 
been established for them. 

In arranging the course of study in the schools for 
girls in Munich, the same principle of Kennen-lernen is 
applied, the learning to understand the object with which 
one is dealing. Since nearly all girls from the poorer 
classes marry after a few years of industrial or commer- 
cial work, and since from this class comes our largest and 
most steady increase in population, it is the opinion that 
a trade school for girls, although its professed aim may 
be to train for special lucrative employments, should 
nevertheless not lose sight of the fact that the special 
field of activity for the girl for by far the longest period 
of her life will be in the home. The priceless object with 

20 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

which the woman deals is the baby, and Kersc*iensteiner's 
scheme makes compulsory a course in maternal peda- 
gogy, which should, he believes, be a part of every 
woman's training for life, whether she is to be a working 
woman or a social leader. It is believed that such train- 
ing will awaken dormant sympathies in girls, will develop 
a natural instinct in a healthful way, and tend to incline 
their tastes away from industrial life and toward domestic 
life. For we must regard it as a calamity if our young 
girls are going into our factories faster than is necessary, 
to the possible detriment of their health and the health 
of their posterity. 

The teaching of maternal pedagogy includes instruc- 
tion as to the toilet and diet of the baby, preventives 
of disease, care of the child when going through the 
children's diseases, and child nurture in general. An illus- 
tration of work in a class composed mostly of peasant 
girls of various ages up to eighteen will illustrate the 
strictly scientific though elementary nature of the in- 
struction given. The recitation opened with rapid ques- 
tioning upon the toilet of the baby : 

Why does the baby need warm clothing at birth? 
Why is woolen warmer than cotton ? 
Why does it need soft clothing? 

Several members of the class were sent to the black- 
board to demonstrate by free-hand drawing that they 
could cut the various articles of a baby's toilet, drawing 



21 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

each article the ordinary size for a new-born baby, and 
making the proper curves for neck and sleeves. 

Why does a baby need to be fed every two hours? 

Why is cleanliness a preventive of disease? 

Why is repose a preventive of disease? 

What is the value of repose in the open air as com- 
pared with repose indoors? 

Instruction in the trade school for girls in Munich 
is given in every kind of woman's work, hand and ma- 
chine sewing, embroidery, lace-making, etc. Most of the 
girls who attend expect to marry, and are not preparing 
themselves to earn a living. A noticeable feature of the 
school is its normal department, for the continual train- 
ing of teachers is an imperative necessity in this work. 
A continuation school is associated with it where Wed- 
nesday and Saturday afternoons girls from thirteen to 
sixteen years of age receive instruction. Girls who at- 
tend this school are excused from attendance upon the 
Sunday School where otherwise the law in Munich re- 
quires them to study. 

The idea seems general in Germany that in the 
training of the young something besides technical ef- 
ficiency should be aimed at. A school which has from the 
outset held this aim steadily before it is the Victoria Con- 
tinuation School in Berlin. Its teachers are trained to 
inculcate some moral lesson in every recitation, no mat- 
ter what the subject is, and the success with which it is 
done is wonderful. To give one illustration from a lesson 
in commercial correspondence : it was shown the girls 



22 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

how easy it is for misunderstandings to arise, in just 
what ways they may come about, the obstacles and spe- 
cial difficulties in the way of coming to an agreement. 
What is necessary in order to understand another's point 
of view? Goodwill; and much may be accomplished by 
courteous language. Therefore a kindly spirit is incul- 
cated and courteous phrases are taught. 

The school was founded in 1878, and is supported by 
a charitable association. It offers to girls from poor 
homes a course of three half years which they must agree 
to complete when they enter. Since attendance is not 
compulsory, and parents were not at first used to the 
idea of so much schooling for their daughters, but few 
pupils came when the school opened and its growth was 
slow. It numbers now about 600 pupils. It comprises 
a commercial school and a school of millinery, of dress- 
making, and of lingerie (the making of underwear). 
Frau Henschke, its founder, always bore in mind that 
most of the girls would become wives and mothers; she 
encouraged all to pay some attention to housewifery, 
and made a little instruction possible for all in cooking 
and sewing, though not all take it. It is the opinion of 
the present director that, if possible, a law should be 
enacted to require every girl between fourteen and six- 
teen or seventeen years of age to take at least two hours 
of work a day in a continuation school. 

The Victoria School has won an assured place for 
itself in the public esteem, and has many imitators in 
Prussia. 



23 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

Since Berlin is so large a metropolis, resembling New 
York in the rush of life and business, it does not sur- 
prise an investigator to find here as in New York great 
pressure brought to bear by parents to introduce their 
children into wage-earning occupations as early as pos- 
sible. It is in consequence of the strength of this pres- 
sure that the Victoria School, which is for the poorest 
classes, attempts to hold the majority of its girls only 
a year and a half, and that the best equipped trade school 
for girls in Germany, the school in Potsdam, adapts its 
instruction to a one yearns course for girls who must go 
to work. 

The trade school in Potsdam provides instruction in 
four distinct departments: 

(i) a school of housekeeping, 

(2) a trade school in which courses are offered in 

washing and ironing, cooking and baking, 
simple hand-sewing and machine-sewing, the 
making of underwear (lingerie), dressmaking, 
millinery, artistic handwork, drawing and 
painting, 

(3) a commercial school, 

(4) a normal school. 

Some methods in this school are very American; for 
example, the girls do not practise their stitches on samp- 
lers as in so many continental schools, but on the gar- 
ments themselves which they begin by making as in the 
trade schools of New York and Boston. They have 



24 



VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN GERMANY 

learned simple sewing already in the Volkschule. The 
aim seems not to be perfection in workmanship, but the 
best that may be acquired along with facility in a given 
short period of instruction and practice. To the super- 
ficial observer, the normal school which is a regular fea- 
ture of the continental trade school for girls is the most 
interesting department to visit because of the more scien- 
tific character of its work. Girls must be eighteen years 
of age to enter the normal school, and are already more 
or less proficient in hand work. A unique feature of 
this school is the large collection of models for the de- 
partment of sewing and dressmaking to illustrate the 
whole process of spinning and weaving in cotton, flax, 
silk, and wool, and a second collection of natural objects 
to illustrate the process of preparing the raw material for 
manufacture from the cocoon and cotton plant to the 
skeins of silk as they are imported from Japan and the 
imported cotton from our Southern States. Still a third 
collection of models in wood silvered over reproduces 
every part of a sewing machine, the smaller pieces many 
times enlarged, for the use of the teacher in showing 
the girls how to operate and take care of the machine. 
Similarly in the normal class of housekeeping lectures 
illustrated from a collection in the school are given on 
all kinds of materials; for example, on wood, the differ- 
ent kinds, native country, characteristics, value, uses, 
etc. ; on glass, its history, process of manufacture, uses, 
etc. ; on pepper, tea, coffee, etc., the whole history of pro- 
duction, preparation, adulteration, etc. As in our train- 



25 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

ing schools, the students in the normal classes are given 
practice in teaching by conducting recitations in the 
elementary work of the one year pupils in the trade 
school. 

Belgium. 

In passing from Germany to Belgium, one steps into 
an environment as different as the languages of the two 
peoples. Belgium is a very industrial country, honey- 
combed with mines and dotted over wnth manufacturing 
towns. Its enterprise may be measured by the perfec- 
tion of its railway service. From Brussels to Antwerp 
block trains run every hour and accommodation trains 
between, the service resembling that between New York 
and Philadelphia, and to every part of Belgium there are 
convenient trains for the business man from Brussels 
morning, noon, and night. 

From its highly industrial character one might ex- 
pect to find here as in Germany a general and marked 
development along the lines of industrial training in its 
educational system. Yet it is surprising to discover in 
a country which is not so large in area as the two small 
states of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined over 
six hundred vocational schools, all well attended and 
over half of them schools of trade and housekeeping for 
girls. There is no compulsory education law in Belgium, 
although throughout the kingdom school privileges are 
provided children up to the age of twelve years, and at- 
tendance upon the trade schools is voluntary. Although 



26 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

most of them are supported by state and city, a small 
tuition fee is regularly charged, and perhaps partly in 
consequence of this practice the children in the day 
trade schools are not in general from the poorest classes. 

The Belgians are an artistic people, and their national 
characteristic expresses itself most naturally and uncon- 
sciously in their schools. Beauty of workmanship is 
their ideal and perfection is their standard of work. 
The patience and enthusiasm with which they strive for 
their ideal leads them into certain definite methods of 
work and school organization. The course of study is 
nearly always from three to five years long with both 
morning and afternoon sessions in the day schools, and 
instruction in academic and industrial work is given, the 
two being closely correlated. Since schooling is not 
compulsory, only the better part of the appHcants are 
admitted to many schools. As might be expected hand 
rather than machine work plays the leading role, and ex- 
cellence in the artistic trades is most marked. 

To most of the trade schools, children are not ad- 
mitted under the age of fourteen years, and in the schools 
for girls in Brussels which do admit them younger 
scarcely any are seen. Their absence is explained on the 
ground that they do not progress rapidly and are there- 
fore not encouraged to come. A certain degree of ma- 
turity of judgment is undoubtedly necessary for progress 
in most trades. Yet what a child of thirteen years can do 
under proper instruction and under the stimulus of a high 
national ideal is well illustrated in the admirable school 

27 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

for boys, called L'ficole Professionelle d'Armurerie et 
de Petite M^canique in Liege. The city of Li^ge has 
for centuries been famous for the superior excellence and 
beauty of workmanship of its arms, and the boys in this 
school, all of whom are small, many thirteen years old 
and some only twelve, produce results which can hardly 
be surpassed by an adult. Their hours are from eight 
to twelve in the morning and from half-past one to five 
in the afternoon, six hours a week being spent upon draw- 
ing. Iron is, of course, a soft metal, and its manipula- 
tion is not beyond the muscular power of a young boy. 
The first bit of work required of the boy is to make a 
piece of rough iron into a parallelopiped of absolutely 
exact measurement and then to give it a high polish. In 
his work the boy is not thinking of economy of time or 
of the commercial value of a highly polished instrument, 
but rather of exactness and beauty, and a kind of pleasure 
in work and absence of hurry seemed to pervade the 
activity of the workroom. 

Here as in all the Flemish schools both in Belgium 
and Holland great emphasis is laid upon drawing, and 
the rule is strictly adhered to that every object shall be 
constructed after a drawing with given measurements 
and not after a model. Many hours are spent upon the 
drawing of a single object, and usually three or four 
drawings are made, of the face, back, a section, and 
sometimes the profile. The drawing of the object which 
the boy is constructing is almost invariably pinned up in 
full view of his eyes at his place in the workshop or, if 

28 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

not in plain sight, will be pulled out of a drawer and 
displayed at request. 

In the gun-room of the school of armory in Li^ge, 
small boys make rifle stocks whose parts fit together with 
such exactness that the line of separation is hardly vis- 
ible. In another school in Liege, numbering over six 
hundred pupils, in which pattern-making is taught, iron 
work and blacksmithing, the making of tools and con- 
structing of machines, of cycles and automobiles, work of 
a high grade is done by boys all of whom are small and 
seem young. The same thing is true elsewhere in Bel- 
gium, from which one may reasonably conclude that the 
age at which a boy may begin apprenticeship work in the 
trades should be determined not by his mental develop- 
ment but by his physical development. 

Although in some of the Flemish schools, there seems 
to be a lack of any philanthropic spirit, the art and not 
the girl or the industry and not the boy being upper- 
most in the minds of the teachers, still in som.e schools, 
whose character is determined perhaps mainly by the 
director, the motive is strongly philanthropic. Among 
these may be mentioned an excellent school in Ghent for 
the children of the poor, where a small tuition fee is nom- 
inally charged, but in many cases quietly remitted. In 
this school, which numbers about two hundred pupils, 
quite elementary subjects are taught; such as, brick- 
laying, sign-painting, house-painting, as well as also 
plumbing and work in iron and wood. Here too the 
same high standard of excellence may be observed which 



29 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

is SO marked in the Belgian schools. The power ma- 
chine, delicately adjusted and exquisitely finished, was 
constructed entirely by these boys who are training to be 
simple artisans. 

Another school in which a kindly feeling to the chil- 
dren of the poor is evident is the school of joinery and 
iron-work in the small city of Morlanwelz, which is in the 
heart of the coal-mining district of Belgium. Boys are 
admitted here from the ages of thirteen to sixteen years, 
and some exceptions are made in the case of those even 
younger who have completed the primary school. It is 
thought wrong to reject from a trade school children 
who have no aptitude for study or who are suffering 
from natural disadvantages, from slowness, dullness, etc. 
Therefore all such are welcomed here. When this school 
was organized in 1901, there was much discussion whether 
machinery should be installed and used or not, with the 
final decision that it was too expensive. The wisdom 
of this decision is maintained on the ground that what 
is especially deplored in our working-men is the lack of 
dexterity and professional knowledge, and that the ap- 
prentice does not get the basis of either in the use of 
machinery. Therefore the boys are taught the use of 
ordinary tools and precautions in their use, and how to 
sharpen them and keep them in good order. 

In contradistinction with this position on the vexed 
question of the use of machinery in an apprenticeship 
school stands the great industrial school for men and boys 
at Charleroi. Over 1,000 pupils are in attendance at this 



30 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

school, drawn partly from surrounding factory towns, 
since Charleroi is a city of less than 50,000 inhabitants. 
The actual conditions of the factory workshop are repro- 
duced here. Men and boys work on the group or gang 
system, thereby learning co-operation and also adjust- 
ment to factory conditions, and are put at once upon the 
use of machinery. The machine is a fact and cannot be 
ignored. The object of the apprenticeship of the future 
is not to teach manual dexterity, but rather insight into 
one's work, grasp, how to use a tool or machine so as to 
get the maximum product with the minimum amount of 
expended energy. The daily use of a machine or tool 
does not give this facility, as some may suppose. To 
ofifer a very simple illustration : one workman may ac- 
complish what he wishes with a single stroke of the file, 
whereas another doing the same work may waste several 
strokes because he is afraid that he will press down too 
hard or drive the file too far. His productive power and 
wage-earning capacity are lessened by his timidity. Not 
a third of our machines are worked up to their full ca- 
pacity. Even admitting that the personal equation can 
never be wholly ehminated and that a sentiment exists 
on the part of some workmen not to produce above a 
certain amoimt in a given time lest the standard of wages 
be lowered, even so it remains true that a great number 
of industrious and conscientious men are handicapped for 
life by lack of mechanical training. 

The training at the school in Charleroi is very broad 
as everywhere in Belgium. Courses are provided in three 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

departments, the day, evening, and Sunday schools, and 
include instruction in every trade and every subject bear- 
ing upon the trades from bricklaying and sign-painting 
to advanced laboratory work in which individual experi- 
ments are performed by the student under the supervi- 
sion of the instructor. 

One of the best equipped and largest trade schools 
in Belgium is the industrial school at Antwerp, which »vas 
founded in i860 and has been supported by the province 
and the state since 1866. The school is attended by 
1,380 pupils, and is soon to enlarge its accommodations 
and equipment. It is an evening school; the require- 
ments for admission are the age of fourteen years and a 
perfect knowledge of the four rules of arithmetic; and 
the course is five years long with seven months a year, the 
first three years being given up to drawing, mathematics, 
and bookkeeping mainly, and the other two to special 
subjects such as mechanics and woodwork, still an extra 
year being required of those who take plumbing, silver- 
smithing, electricity, chemistry, etc. The drawing is 
done the first year entirely from models, thereafter some- 
times from memory, and the drawings are sent down to 
the workshops and objects made from them without the 
models being seen. The school possesses a remarkable 
collection of instruments and apparatus for use in the 
lecture room. 

To visit a drawing class of from one to two hundred 
men, all with the rough exterior of daily laborers, to see 
them absorbed in their difficult tasks, to note the tidiness 



32 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

of their work and the clean atmosphere of the well-filled 
room, impresses the visitor with the need of such schools 
in every city for its working-men, who have learned from 
hard experience to appreciate the value of training and 
to regret the restricted opportunities of their youth. 

Girls in the Flemish Schools and the Artistic 

Trades. 

The schools for girls in Belgium, although very num- 
erous, are of no great variety. They are schools of trade 
and housekeeping in which the trades are emphasized, 
or schools of housekeeping and trade in which house- 
wifery is emphasized, or schools of housekeeping only. 
The Flemish people never lose sight of the fact that the 
girl is the maker and keeper of the home, and some 
knowledge of the three essentials of housewifery, cook- 
ing, sewing, and laundering is made possible in every 
trade school for girls and compulsory in many. 

Since the course for a diploma is always three years 
long with sometimes a fourth or fifth year offered in 
special subjects, it is possible to plan a comprehensive 
and well-correlated scheme of work, — and indeed this is 
a universal characteristic of the Flemish schools. At the 
same time it is the custom to provide for those who are 
unable to complete such a program special courses de- 
signed to meet the special needs of various classes of 
workers. 

In no school is this generosity of plan more evident 
than in the school for housekeeping in Amsterdam called 

3 33 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

De Nieuwe Huishoudschool te Amsterdam. This school 
offers seven diploma courses of which three are normal 
courses of three years each to prepare girls to become 
teachers of cooking, of household science, and of launder- 
ing (de behandelung der wasch) ; a fourth is a short course 
in the same three subjects, open only to those who are 
already teaching; and three courses two years long are 
provided, one open to girls of seventeen for training in 
housewifery, one open to girls of fifteen for training as 
mothers' helpers, and one open to girls of twelve or 
thirteen who are going into domestic service. The in- 
struction in all of these courses aims to be scientific as 
well as practical, the chemistry of the foods being taught 
and the hygiene of body, house, food, and clothing, and 
not only the washing and cleansing of all kinds of mate- 
rials and the removing of spots and stains, but also the 
chemistry of the dyes, the mixing of colors, and the dye- 
ing of faded garments. 

Besides the seven diploma courses, there is a general 
course not leading to a diploma in which are taught sew- 
ing, patching, fine mending and darning, the cleansing of 
furniture, laundering, the personal budget, the household 
budget, system, nursing, etc. This is an excellent type of 
a school of housekeeping. The thoroughness of its work 
may be illustrated very simply by its method of teaching 
patching: a sampler is made, composed of nine squares 
of white cloth of different qualities from heavy cotton 
cloth to the finest batiste, and a round patch put in the 
middle of each. 



34 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

In the industrial school for girls in Rotterdam (Indus- 
trieschool voor Meisjes) the children have two hours 
practice a week in patching and mending clothes brought 
from home. This school may be mentioned together with 
the industrial school for girls in Antwerp because of a 
certain resmblance in the teaching of study subjects and 
in the division of work. In both schools much time is 
given to the teaching of Dutch, French, history, geog- 
raphy, arithmetic, bookkeeping, geometry, fine penman- 
ship, drawing, and elementary sciences. In Antwerp, the 
entire morning session is given up to studies, and the 
afternoon session to handwork in eight different trades: 
in dressmaking, lingerie, millinery, the making of arti- 
ficial flowers, of corsets and skirts, industrial drawing, 
drawing from nature, and commerce; the study courses 
run through five years and are obligatory the first 
two, including in the fourth and fifth year, a very com- 
plete lecture course in practical ethics, one's duty to one's 
self, one's family, one's country, mankind, savoir-vivre, 
and the aim and importance of education. Girls are ad- 
mitted to the school in Rotterdam at the age of thirteen 
and in Antwerp at the age of twelve. 

Two sister schools in Brussels stand almost unrivalled 
in certain lines of industrial work: the so-called Bi- 
schoffsheim school, founded in 1865, in which the emphasis 
is placed on the artistic trades, and the school of trade 
and housekeeping, called the ficole Couvreur, founded in 
1888. In the latter school four classes of students are 
recognized : those taking the full course for the diploma, 

35 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

daughters of the well-to-do (des grandes families) for 
special courses, servants of the well-to-do for special 
courses, and affianced brides. The school is divided into 
two sections, a lower course of three years to which girls 
are admitted at the age of twelve years, and which is pre- 
paratory to the upper school or second section, which 
offers special training in dressmaking, lingerie, millinery, 
and commerce, and leads to the diploma. The lower 
school also provides definite training in preparation for 
the duties of wifehood and motherhood. The course in 
domestic economy has been developed into a well-rounded 
education in housewifery. In the practical work of the 
kitchen each girl learns to prepare a fixed number of 
dinners, each with a different soup, entree (hors-d'oeuvre), 
meat, vegetables, and dessert; to prepare special dishes 
such as salads, pickles, jellies, and dishes for the sick at 
special places in the course; to understand the cost of 
foods and the economy of waste material; to draw the 
parts of animals as displayed in the markets and to prac- 
tise purchasing in the markets. The laboratory method 
is not in use here, but the girls work in small classes 
around a large cooking-stove, the actual conditions of the 
ordinary kitchen being reproduced. Lectures on alimen- 
tation, hygiene, and maternal pedagogy, accompany the 
use of a text-book on hygiene and domestic pharmacy, 
which covers the study of diseases, statistics, bacteriology, 
poisons, antiseptics, etc. The lectures do not give, as 
might be supposed, a merely elementary treatment of the 
subjects involved; on the contrary, the treatment is de- 

36 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

tailed. One illustration of its character may be suggestive 
of the whole: not only are the chemical components of 
the body given and the chemical constituents of many 
foods, such as milk, fat, etc., but each step in the process 
of digestion is explained by which the mineral matter 
from the milk, for example, enters into the tissues of the 
body which require it. 

The Bischoffsheim school was the first trade school 
established for girls in Europe. Its main work is the 
teaching of the artistic trades, and much time is given to 
drawing and painting. Girls are admitted as young as 
twelve years of age, though but few of this age are found 
in the school. The making of artificial flowers has become 
a fine art in the Bischoffsheim school. The equipment 
for the work is so simple that it would be easy to intro- 
duce this industry for girls into our own cities. The 
whole outfit occupies one medium-sized light room, and 
consists of several long, plain wooden tables, two alcohol 
lamps at a table where the girls sit at work, a glue pot 
and a few small tools for each girl, fresh flowers in vases 
for models, and the materials out of which the flowers 
are constructed, white silk of good quality, specially pre- 
pared elsewhere and purchased in sheets, cotton cloth, 
cotton batting, paper, and wire, and on the walls a cab- 
inet of aniline dyes. A drawing is first made of the flower 
and of each part of the flower and colored in exact tints, 
and from the drawing the artificial flower is constructed. 
Each girl learns how to mix the dyes so as to produce 
all kinds of neutral tints, and keeps a book of drawings 



37 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

and a note-book in which the method of making each 
flower is written down in detail. The flowers are sold to 
the stores, each girl receiving what is paid for her work. 
A two years* course in drawing is one of the requirements 
for admission to this work. 

The best opportunity for the investigation of the 
teaching of sewing chanced to be given the writer in the 
trade school in the Rue du Poigon, Brussels, which is so 
remarkable for its system, thoroughness, and the perfec- 
tion and beauty of workmanship attained that the subject 
will be treated with considerable detail here in the hope 
that it may prove suggestive and helpful to teachers of 
sewing in our country. It ought to be said first that the 
learning of stitches and simple sewing is compulsory in 
the Belgian as well as the German grammar schools, so 
that the girl on entering from the grammar school is not 
a novice though by no means expert. 

In each department, the course begins with the most 
elementary work and advances step by step as perfec- 
tion is acquired. For example, in the making of under- 
wear, in the first year perfection is acquired in all kinds 
of stitches on many kinds of material ; in the second year 
patterns are made from drawings constructed from meas- 
ures given by the teacher, and miniature garments are 
made; in the third and fourth years the girls take mea- 
sures themselves, and cut, make, and embroider the under- 
wear. In the department of dressmaking, stitches, seam- 
ing, tucking, plaiting, etc., are first practiced with silk 
and cotton thread on all kinds of dress material; simple 

38 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

articles are next made such as petticoats ; and in the third 
and fourth years the cutting and making of clothes for 
children and women, the making of forms and of dolls* 
clothes. In the department of embroidery, embroidery 
stitches are first learned on thick white cotton material, 
and later practiced on fine material ; fine linen is then given 
the girls which they make into hemstiched handker- 
chiefs with a little fine drawn work, embroidered first with 
dots in simple patterns, next with eyelets and dots, then 
with beautifully worked initials in the corners, and lastly 
with original designs worked in the corners. The work 
orate and beautiful designs in birds, flowers, griffins, etc. 
being made for all kinds of household furnishings, such 
as curtains, portieres, pillows, and for a great variety of 
articles for women's use, such as silk fans spangled and 
embroidered in delicate colors. 

The same general plan is followed in the teaching of 
drawing and designing. All pupils take the same prepar- 
atory work for two years, and then differentiate. Those 
studying dressmaking, for example, learn to draw gowns 
from memory and reproduce them in miniature and to 
draw and color gowns to illustrate the history of cos- 
tuming. Exquisite drawings of the gowns of the times 
of Louis XVI are displayed. The general course is 
characterized by the same patient advance. It begins 
with the free-hand drawing of straight Hnes, perpendic- 
ular, horizontal and oblique, and the study of line pro- 
portion, of angles — the themes being taken from hand- 
kerchiefs folded and draped, from Egyptian patterns, 



39 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

etc. — of curves, of primary and secondary colors, and 
neutral tints, of color composition, of the drawing of 
leaves from nature, — the dominant color in a great 
variety being exactly reproduced to teach the eye color 
discrimination, and also all the various tints in single 
leaves being carefully discerned and blocked out, — of 
the drawing of flowers, and finally the subject of design- 
ing in form and color composition is taken up. 

The above outline of work does not profess to be 
complete. It is only hoped by these incomplete illustra- 
tions to give some idea of how in the Belgian schools 
highly artistic and perfect workmanship is actually at- 
tained through a slow and painstaking progress from the 
most elementary beginnings. 

The Teaching of Designing. 

The method of teaching designing for the artistic 
trades is the same throughout the Flemish trade schools. 
It is based on the use of nature motives, the analysis, 
conventionalizing, and new combination of the parts and 
colors of natural objects. Designing from geometrical 
motives, i. e. original groupings of circles, curves, dots, 
diamonds, drops, angles, and the like into patterns that 
may be used in the manufacture of wall papers, dress 
goods, house decorations and novelties of all kinds, this 
method of designing is regarded as elementary and is 
taught in the lower schools. 

The Flemish method may be explained by the accom- 
panying reproductions of practice pieces done by girls in 



4G 



< 





'a 



O 

P^ 



O 

u 

O 

'o 
o 

o 
c3 



b/3 









(^ 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

the industrial school at Rotterdam. Plate No. i gives a 
first lesson in designing from the use of a nature motive. 
A sprig of leaves with a blossom was given the student 
to be drawn and colored. The general outline was ob- 
served to be that of an irregular triangle, and the student 
was directed to draw an equilateral triangle. This was the 
first step in conventionalization. The blossom which was 
toward the middle of the sprig was placed in the exact 
middle of the triangle, and itself conventionalized. Since 
there was a leaf in each corner of the sprig, one was put in 
each angle of the triangle, all three being made exactly 
alike in shape and size. Four colors were finally selected 
from the leaves and blossom of the sprig and introduced 
into the design in an entirely new arrangement. The re- 
sult arrived at was a design in which everything was sug- 
gested by the natural object, and yet nothing in the one 
was like anything in the other. Leaves, flowers, shells, 
butterflies, spiders' webs, feathers, were some of the ob- 
jects used for practice work in the schools. Even the 
human figure was found conventionalized and worked 
into a very original and artistic design border in a school 
of bookbinding in the Rue du President in Brussels. 

This method may be subjected to abuse and misuse. 
It is quite as possible to make unattractive designs from 
nature motives as from geometrical motives, and indeed 
the skill which comes from careful and complete training 
is so necessary to the success of the method that it is 
probably better not to attempt it at all unless much time 
can be given to it. 



41 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

The question naturally arises whether it is possible 
to cultivate the taste of a nation. The German educators 
are quite aware of the lack of taste which is a defect of 
their people, and with characteristic thoroughness and 
hopefulness are making a study of the problem how to 
elevate the taste of their nation by education. Wider 
and wider in the Bezirksschulen are the doors being 
opened to the study of drawing, not so much that draw- 
ing may be learned as that taste may be developed. It 
is believed that children take more note of small objects 
than of large ones, and on this principle many school 
buildings in Germany are now being built in a simple 
style, every effort being made to make the entrance or 
some other small but conspicuous part beautiful in the 
hope that the child will notice and appreciate it. Chil- 
dren may be taught to be attentive to construction and 
color composition in decoration and to try to imitate it, 
and may learn to observe what is tasteless in architecture 
and other arts. For this purpose art collections are 
valuable and fine pictures in schoolrooms. It should be 
remembered, however, that a picture has little or no 
educative value to the child if its beauties are not ex- 
plained to him. 

Schools of the Fourth Grade in Belgium. 

Since instruction in the elementary schools in Belgium 

is provided children only up to the age of twelve years and 

since most of the trade schools do not admit children 

under fourteen years of age, there is a hiatus in the 

42 



PLATE II 




A second lesson in designing from a flower motive. Trade School for 

Girls, Rotterdam. 



SOME FLEMISH SCHOOLS 

school life of a child that needs to be bridged over. 
Quite recently efforts have been made to meet this need 
in Brussels and some other Belgian cities by the estab- 
lishment of schools of the fourth grade (Ecoles du Qua- 
trieme Degre) so-called because the elementary schools 
are divided into three grades, primary, intermediate, and 
upper. One of the best types of such a school for boys 
is L'Ecole Primaire Superieure Technique in the Rue 
de la Chapelle, Brussels. The school is preparatory to 
a trade school, and the course is so arranged as to give 
a boy a glance over several kinds of industries in order 
to help him to a choice when he enters a trade school 
or factory life, but does not aim to teach him any fixed 
trade, simply to provide une m^thode active d' Education 
generale. 

The school is so unique that its division of subjects 
and time are given here: 

First year: 

Physical exercises (including gymnastics, sports, 
under the direction of a teacher, swimming, 
with hygienic precautions to take, and rem- 
edies to use in case of accident) 

10 hrs. 40 min. a week. 
Industrial training 12 " 



Scientific " 10 " 

Artistic and literary 9 " 20 

total 42 



43 



THE ENGLISH MOTIVE 



Second year: 






Physical exercises 


ID hrs. 40 min. 


2 weeks. 


Industrial training 


13 " 20 " 


(( it 


Scientific " 


9 " 20 " 


11 li 


Artistic and literary 


8 " 40 " 


(( it 



total 42 

From time to time instruction in morals is given by 
means of talks. Drawing occupies four hours a week 
throughout the course. A peculiarity of this school is 
that parallel work in three kinds of industries is carried 
on in each class each week in the year. For example, 
in the second year training in woodwork occupies four 
periods, in clay modeling two, and in ironwork six. 

In a school of the same grade for girls in the Rue 
Blaes in Brussels, the industrial work is arranged on the 
same principle. Parallel instruction is given in two 
trades, in dressmaking and the making of underwear. 
The hours in the girls' school number thirty-three a week, 
of which fifteen are spent on industrial work and drawing. 

England. 

Some twenty years ago the English people became 
aroused to the fact that the great majority of children 
who leave school to go to work between the ages of 
twelve and sixteen years enter casual or unskilled em- 
ployment, and join the ranks of the poorly-paid day- 
laborer from which few can rise. For, in England, 



44 



PLATE III 




Design based on a butterfly motive. A practice piece from the Trade 
School for Girls, Rotterdam. 



THE ENGLISH MOTIVE 

although the law requires a child to attend a day school 
until his fourteenth birthday, still if in the opinion of the 
proper authorities there is good and sufficient reason 
for his going to work earlier he may do so. Under this 
latter provision of the English law children may and in 
some sections do go into the factories as young as eleven 
years of age, although not in great numbers. 

Stimulated by a strong philanthropic sentiment, the 
London County Council, which controls the schools of 
London, began to establish higher elementary schools 
which are central schools fed from the lower schools. 
Children are admitted to the higher schools at the age of 
twelve who if they remained in the lower schools until 
they were fourteen years old would then enter the trades 
or casual or unskilled employment. The central schools 
provide a four years' course, and their aim is to keep 
children in school until they are sixteen years old, and 
in the meantime fit them to enter the trades or trade 
schools of which there are a few of recent origin in Lon- 
don. The central schools are in no sense trade schools 
since shopwork occupies only two hours and a half a 
week, but for the last six years they have taken a stead- 
ily increasing bias toward the trades, and every subject 
is now taught with reference to its bearing upon the 
trades; e. g. trade arithmetic, commercial geography, 
mechanical drawing. 

. Since the philanthropic motive is so strong in Eng- 
land, it is not surprising that instruction for the trades 
should have been introduced early in the schools for 

45 



THE ENGLISH MOTIVE 

cripples and homeless children. A description of one 
school for homeless children, the East London Industrial 
School at Lewisham, may help us to understand the 
English motive. The boys entered at Lewisham are 
waifs picked up in the streets of London by the police 
or by individuals who report them to the police. They 
may be homeless or orphans or from bad homes. They 
are not bad boys, for such are sent to the reform schools, 
but they are those who are sure to drift into a bad life 
if uncared for. There are about one hundred and fifty 
boys in the school, all boarders, who sleep in wards; 
they are constantly under supervision, even when dress- 
ing in the morning and playing in the playground. They 
are never allowed to play in the streets or to leave the 
premises except to do certain specified kinds of work like 
delivering goods. 

They are taken from the age of six years and up, 
and may by law be kept in school until they are sixteen. 
Some are put out as young as fourteen, but not many. 
If a boy misbehaves after he has been placed, he may be 
brought back and kept in school again for as long as 
three months. The knowledge of this serves as a check. 
About thirty boys are placed every year, averaging five 
a year in the army, ten upon farms in Wales, and the 
others in special skilled trades. When a boy is ready to 
be put out, a report is made to the London County 
Council with a recommendation as to a trade for him. 
The boy is then placed, and the particulars of his plac- 
ing reported to the Council who send an officer to in- 

46 



PLATE IV 




Design based on a flower motive. Bischoffsheim School, Brussels. 



THE ENGLISH MOTIVE 

vestigate. A small grant is made the school when a boy 
under sixteen is placed to pay for occasional help given 
him and for the visits made upon him. The record of 
each boy is kept for three years after he has left the 
school. He earns on an average seven or eight shillings 
a week to begin with. 

All the little boys are taught needle-work, darning, 
mending, and shirt-making, wood-work, and manual 
training. When the special trades are taken up, such as 
tailoring and shoemaking, half-time is given to the work 
of the trade and half-time to the elementary subjects 
taught in the school. Agriculture is taught those who 
are going on to farms in Wales, and the playing of band 
instruments to those who are going into the army. The 
school boasts a band of sixty boys. The personal super- 
vision given the boys and the kindly interest taken in the 
career of each member of it has made this school a true 
and beloved alma mater, continually visited by its grad- 
uates particularly upon holidays. 

As the London County Council is interested in and 
supervising and endorsing the philanthropic work done 
in the schools for homeless boys, so in various other 
places in England and Scotland the local school officials 
are actively engaged in what is distinctively philanthropic 
work. 

In the report of this work published in 1909 by the 
Consultative Committee on Attendance, Compulsory or 
Otherwise at Continuation Schools, the following intro- 
ductory remark is made : 

47 



THE ENGLISH MOTIVE 

" A great defect in our social system is the absence of 
any plan whereby lads leaving the elementary schools, 
perhaps with good character and good ability, can be 
diverted into the paths of permanent employment, skilled 
or unskilled." 

From this report we give here the efforts being made 
in three cities to remedy this defect. The work is partly 
in the nature of propaganda for the trade schools and 
partly employment agency work. 

At Halifax, England, a city of 107,000 inhabitants in 
1900, the chief attendance officer forwards every Sat- 
urday morning to the organizer of the evening trade 
schools a list of the scholars who have left the day schools 
during the current week. On the following Monday 
morning, one of the clerks from the office visits the home 
of each boy and points out to the parent the advan- 
tages of attending the evening school. If the parent 
gives an unfavorable reply, the clerk sees the boy himself. 
One clerk does all the work. 

At Finchley, a near suburb of London, a letter is sent 
by the headmaster of each school to the parents of every 
child near its thirteenth birthday, inquiring what is pro- 
posed in regard to the child's career and offering to 
assist them in finding a suitable occupation for him or her. 
As a result of the interview arising from this letter, the 
headmaster fills up a form which reaches the Secretary 
of the Education Committee at the time when the child 
is thirteen years and nine months old, so that the Edu- 
cation Committee has at least three months in which to 

48 



PLATE V 




Design based on a spider and flower motive. Bischoffsheim School, 

Brussels. 



^ 



THE ENGLISH MOTIVE 

find a suitable occupation for the candidate. At the 
local Education Office, a register is kept in which are 
entered the details sent in by the headmasters together 
with the particulars of the post where the boy or girl is 
subsequently employed and the conditions of such em- 
ployment. 

In Edinburgh, the School Board has adopted a 
scheme for the establishment of an educational informa- 
tion and employment bureau under charge of a standing 
committee of seven members of the School Board. 
There will be associated with it an advisory council, con- 
sisting of the other members of the School Board and 
of such representatives of public bodies and trade asso- 
ciations as the Board may from time to time co-opt, due 
regard being had to securing representation of the prin- 
cipal trades and of women's occupations. 

In the city of London, the same kind of work has 
been begun by a large philanthropic association called the 
Apprenticeship and Skilled Employment Association. 
This association has organized twenty local committees 
in as many districts in the city and about ten committees 
for the provinces of England, and hopes eventually to 
have a committee for each district in London. The 
committees consist of from ten members up, some with 
paid secretaries since it is difficult to get good voluntary 
workers. Each committee gets in touch with the chil- 
dren of its own district who are leaving school at the 
age of fourteen, and tries by a method of persuasion with 
the parents to have the boys apprenticed in skilled 

4 49 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 

trades, such as tailoring, even though it is recognized 
that they get lower wages for some time than in some 
unskilled occupations like the messenger service. The 
committee makes a study of these boys and girls to find 
for what trade each is fit, visits the employers in the 
neighborhood, secures places for the children, and then 
urges them to go to the evening trade schools. 

In the case of girls, the trade schools and schools of 
housekeeping are kept entirely separate in London. In 
the elementary schools sew^ing is a required subject from 
the primary grades up, and cooking is taught to all girls 
at the age of thirteen. It is very difficult to get po- 
sitions for girls in certain trades in which they might 
excel because of the opposition of the trades-unions to 
the competition of women, and therefore instruction in 
these trades is not ofifered girls as yet. 

The American Situation. 
On returning to American soil, one feels with fresh 
force the difficult educational problems that are to be 
solved here, and the peculiarly practical, democratic, and 
optimistic spirit with which we are rising to meet them. 
We have been slow to recognize them, and the general 
public does not as yet understand them, but we are begin- 
ning to grapple with them. We have a few recent ex- 
periments in the upper grammar grades of our public 
schools in cities like Boston, New York, and Philadel- 
phia; we have some factory apprenticeship schools Hke 
the one conducted on a large scale by the General 

50 



PLATE VI 




Design based on a flower motive. Bischoffsheim School, Brussels. 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 

Electric Company of West Lynn, Mass. ; we have corpo- 
ration schools for apprentices estabHshed by the New 
York Central Railroad; we have some half-time work 
and study schools like the Fitchburg and Beverly schools 
in Massachusetts; we have philanthropic schools like 
the School of Salesmanship in Boston and the Waterbury 
Institute of Craft and Industry in Connecticut; and lat- 
est of all there is announced a technical training school 
for hotel help to be established in Indianapolis as a 
branch of the National Trades School and Technical In- 
stitute, to be maintained by the International Hotel 
Stewards Association. We have some well-organized 
and well-equipped schools that have passed the exper- 
imental stage like the Hebrew Technical Institute for 
Boys, the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, the New 
York Trade School for men and boys, Pratt Institute, 
Drexel Institute, Simmons College. Some of our uni- 
versities are alive to the urgency of the call for a train- 
ing that shall enable young men to deal with modern 
industrial questions in an altruistic spirit and with some 
comprehension of their meaning, and young women to 
bring to the vexed but vital problems of home life an 
enhghtened intelHgence, and these universities are estab- 
lishing departments of industrial education and domestic 
science like Chicago University. 

Our problems are our own. We are not much 
troubled by the conflict of church and state in educa- 
tional affairs as some European countries are. We are 
not at all vexed by the question of the language of in- 

51 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 

struction like Germany in Poland. But our schools are 
sometimes greatly hampered by the invasion of non- 
English-speaking foreign-born children into every grade 
at every age, reluctant pupils who do not fit into our 
system, and we face a second even more difficult sit- 
uation in that whatever type of school we organize for 
children, we must not eliminate for any child of any 
parentage at any stage in his education before he is four- 
teen years old the possibility of advancing not on- 
wards but upwards into the higher pursuits if he will. It 
is this second situation which makes the question of in- 
dustrial training in our grammar schools so troublesome. 
In the so-called Eliot School in Jamaica Plain, Bos- 
ton, an experiment is now in its third year which aims 
to meet this second situation. From the neighboring 
Agassiz Grammar School, an industrial class is formed 
every year of boys from ten to thirteen years of age, 
mostly from the sixth grade, who must spend five hours 
a week upon handwork and at the same time are not 
excused from any of the regular work of the Agassiz 
School. An hour and a half of the time is given up to 
drawing. Articles in heavy paste-board and wood used 
by the thousand in the city schools, such as cloth- 
covered pasteboard pencil boxes and wooden bench stops, 
are furnished the schools from this workshop, and special 
orders are filled when the demand comes, for catalogue 
boxes for example, mineral drawers, etc. The room is 
equipped with an outfit of carpenters' benches, a circular 
saw, and various labor-saving devices. 

52 



PLATE YII 




Design based on a thistle motive. Bischoffsheim School, Brussels. 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 

The school numbers now 132 in three classes, and the 
experiment has been long enough continued to arrive 
at some conclusions as to its success. Three proven 
results are noteworthy: the boys in the industrial class 
cover just as much ground in their studies as the boys 
not in the industrial class, and do it in less time per week ; 
the number of failures to win promotion is smaller than 
the average; and fewer boys from this class have left 
school at the age of fourteen than would be expected. 
In general it may be claimed that the handwork has had 
a stimulating effect upon the mental processes, and has 
given the boys a better idea of the value of book-learning. 

The product is always designed for use, and is of a 
more practical nature than that made in the ordinary man- 
ual training school. In this particular it differs also from 
what is produced in the schools of the fourth grade in 
Belgium, in which the articles made are mainly practice 
pieces and are exceedingly simple. 

It is sometimes maintained that it would be impos- 
sible for us to introduce into our educational system the 
German continuation school, yet such an experiment is 
being tried this year in Boston. The obstacle in the 
way of its success is the first of the two difficult sit- 
uations mentioned above which we face. Since children 
in the German schools are practically all native-born, 
every boy who enters a continuation school may be said 
to have had eight years of schooling by the time he is 
fourteen years old, whereas with us many foreign-born 
children cannot read and write English at the age of 



53 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 

fourteen. A continuation school, therefore, which made 
a knowledge of arithmetic through fractions a require- 
ment for admission would exist in the main for older 
boys and would only partially help in the solution of our 
problem. As an illustration of this we may cite the co- 
operative Y. M. C. A. and factory school of Bridgeport, 
which provides two hours of instruction a week in the 
day-time at company expense in mathematics, drawing, 
and a little elementary science to boys selected by the 
employers who are interested. The school grew in the 
first four months to number forty-four pupils not one of 
whom was under sixteen years. 

As a second illustration, we may cite the Union School 
of Salesmanship in Boston, a co-operative continuation 
school for salesgirls from five large mercantile houses 
who contribute to its support and whose employees re- 
ceive instruction five hours a day five days in the week 
in company time. To enter this continuation school, 
pupils must be at least eighteen years of age. 

The Connecticut legislature in the session of 1909 
made the educational requirements for children between 
fourteen and sixteen years of age who leave school to go 
to work the ability to read fluently and write legibly in 
English or their native tongue and a knowledge of arith- 
metic through fractions. In order to establish the very 
desirable German continuation school in our state, it 
would probably be necessary to require a knowledge of 
reading and writing in the English language without the 
alternative of such knowledge in their native tongue. 

54 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 

With the assumption of this requirement as a near 
possibiHty, the following recommendations are made to 
the members of the League as a result of the brief in- 
vestigation which we have been summarizing: 

I. that we advocate the introduction into our gram- 
mar schools in every town of 20,000 inhabitants or over 
in Connecticut industrial courses of five hours a week 
open to all children from the sixth grade up, and as far 
as practicable in smaller towns also. 

II. that we advocate the establishment by the State 
of day trade schools in every town of 20,000 inhabitants 
or over for children over fourteen years of age who can 
pass an examination in the reading and writing of Eng- 
lish and in arithmetic through fractions. 

III. that these schools be open in the evening to all 
workmen over sixteen years of age. 

IV. that special courses from six to ten hours a 
week be obligatory upon all children from fourteen to 
eighteen years of age who have left school to go to work, 
and that they be given in company time with no deduc- 
tion from their wages. 

The question, of course, arises whether an industrial 
course in our upper grammar grades should be made 
elective or obligatory. For an answer to this question, 
we may refer to the plan adopted by the Agassiz School : 
that the five-hour-a-week apprenticeship work be offered 
as an elective, and two hours a week of manual training 
be obligatory upon all not electing the workshop course. 
When, however, the apprenticeship instruction has passed 



55 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 

the experimental stage, if it becomes certain that it 
stimulates the children to do better school work in a 
shorter amount of time and if its popularity grows, it 
seems likely that the demand for it will become general 
and that it will in time supersede the manual training for 
all pupils. 

If we are really thinking of real people with real 
wants to be satisfied, we cannot fail to see how varied 
these needs are: there is need in our greater cities of 
a one-year trade school for those girls and boys upon 
whom the pressure is almost irresistible to earn even a 
small weekly wage; there is a large place for two-year 
trade schools, particularly in cities the size of Bridge- 
port and New Britain in which two such state trade 
schools have just been organized ; there is a large number 
of boys and girls in all cities who must enter wage-earning 
occupations, commercial or industrial, early and yet are 
not under immediate pressure so to do, who can afford 
several years in which to fit themselves for a high grade 
of work in any given vocation ; and there is a demand for 
diversified secondary schools which may be preparatory 
for the higher schools of technology and the colleges, 
or may furnish the sum total of culture desired. It is to 
be noted that in the Saxon scheme the claims of all these 
classes are definitely met. 

In response to these various demands, all kinds of 
such schools are already being organized in American 
cities scattered over a wide territory, but no general 
scheme of education has yet been evolved to include them 

56 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 

all. An interesting plan for New York State has been 
worked out by Dr. Andrew S. Draper, Commissioner of 
Education, which provides for an elementary school of 
six grades and differentiated secondary schools beginning 
thereafter. A child of twelve years, at which age he is sup- 
posed to have completed the sixth grade, is too young to 
have a bent toward any kind of a vocation, and the 
question may be raised in regard to Dr. Draper's scheme 
whether vocational direction at this point does not as- 
sume too much responsibility. 

Whatever system of industrial education it is that we 
are little by little developing in the United States, it is 
so far of a most practical kind. In our girls' schools we 
are not teaching perfect sewing upon practice samplers — 
many are the tears that are shed upon these same beauti- 
fully worked samplers we are told — but the child is 
put at once upon the making of articles for daily use, 
her sewing apron and workbag, and learns by making a 
series of garments not exquisite workmanship, but how 
to sew well enough in a short course to get and keep a 
place in a dressmaker's shop. Our boys are taught for 
example that perfect finish is to be given a tool only when 
it brings a higher price in the market. At the same time 
all our schools are aiming to produce a higher grade of 
work than is put on the market by the manufacturers of 
cheap commodities. 

Another characteristic of our industrial work outside 
of the grammar grades and the manual training depart- 
ments seems to be a tendency to produce even in practice 



57 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 

work what is of real value, not diminutive garments and 
miniature chairs and bureaus, but garments to be worn, 
book-cases to be used. This is more interesting and 
more stimulating. 

Our love of what is stimulating may be given another 
illustration from a comparison of the rare collection of 
art objects at Drexel Institute with the beautiful and 
much more extensive and comprehensive collection in the 
Zeichnungsschule in Dresden. The German collection, 
one must suppose, is of greater value to the instructor 
as illustrative material for lectures on the history and 
character of every kind of art from pottery and sculpture 
to textile fabrics, but the Drexel collection is unique, 
excites the admiration, catches and chains the attention 
as the other does not. As the old-fashioned New Eng- 
lander might say '' We admire to be interested." 

Whatever may be said for or against our methods, 
one thing is plain to the most superficial observer who 
has reached the age at which he has a backward per- 
spective that appreciation of the beautiful in the fine arts 
has received a great impetus from somewhere in the last 
quarter of a century. Taste in architecture is more gen- 
eral, book illustrations are of a far higher order, house 
decoration is simpler and more tasteful in the homes of 
culture. 

Indeed, we beg leave to close this very hasty and in- 
adequate glance over a subject rich with suggestions with 
the simple proposition that we are not dreamy thinkers 
in the United States, we are trying to think with a pur- 

58 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 

pose, to focus our thoughts upon some near and real 
result, and we advance with an optimism which is not 
crude but born of real opportunity. 

Mary Crowell Welles, 
General Secretary of the Consumers' 
League of Connecticut. 
Newington, Ct. 
February, 191 1. 



59 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 



The following Exhibit is in the possession of the 

League : 

I. From De Industrieschool voor Meisjes, Rotterdam, 

(a) Ten articles to illustrate the teaching of lingerie by re- 
quiring the pupils to make diminutive garments. 

(b) Four samplers to illustrate the teaching of fine darning 
and re-knitting. 

(c) One sampler to illustrate the teaching of tailoring. 

(d) Four large practice pieces in colors to illustrate early- 
lessons in the teaching of designing from nature motives. 

II. From L'Ecole Professionnelle Funck, Brussels, 

Nine articles to illustrate the teaching of lingerie by re- 
quiring the pupils to practise sewing and embroidery 
stitches, buttonholing, tucking, etc., upon samplers. 

III. From L'Ecole Bischoffsheim, Brussels, 

(a) Six photographs to illustrate advanced work in design- 
ing from nature motives. 

(b) Flowers and materials to illustrate artificial-flower 
making. 

IV. From L'Ecole Professionnelle et Menagere, Ave. de la Toison 

d'Or, Brussels, 

(a) One sampler to illustrate the first month's work of the 
first year in lingerie. 

(b) One sampler to illustrate the first month's work of the 
second year in dressmaking. 

V. From L'Ecole Professionnelle pour Jeunes Filles, Antwerp , 

One sampler to illustrate the teaching of drawn work and 
embroidery stitches in silk. 



60 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 

VI. From the public grammar school, Morlanwelz, 

Seven samplers to illustrate the teaching of stitches in 
the elementary grades. 

VII. From^Die Handels-und Gewerbeschule, Potsdam, 

(a) Four samplers to illustrate patching and seaming. 

(b) One piece of art work. 

VIII. From the Waterbury Institute of Craft and Industry, 

Eleven pieces to illustrate the first twelve lessons in 
pillow lace-making. 

IX. An exhibit is promised from the State Trade School, Bridgeport. 



6i 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 



The Schools visited by the Investigator of the 

League. 



HOLLAND. 

De Nieuwe Huishoudschool .... 

De Dagteeken en Kunstambachtschool 
De Industrieschool voor Meisjes 

De Ambachtschool 

De School Quellinui 

De Industrieschool voor Meisjes .... 

BELGIUM. 

Ecole Industrielle 

Ecole Professionnelle pour Jeunes Filles . 
Institut du Sacre-Coeur de I'lmmaculee Conception 

6cole Bischoffsheim 

Ecole Professionnelle de Tailleurs 

Ecole Professionnelle de M^canique de Precision 

d'Horlogerie et d'Electricite 

Institut Jean Bethune 

6cole de Typographic 

Ecole de Tappissicrs-Garnisseurs 
^cole de Reliure et de Dorure .... 
Eicole Couvreur, Professionnelle et Menagerc . 
]&cole Professionnelle pour Jeunes Filles . 

Rue du President 
Ecole Professionnelle pour Jeunes Filles 

( Rue du Poingon ) 
lEcole Professionnelle et Menagerc 
Ecole Primaire Superieure Technique 

(filles) 

College Saint-Louis 

6cole Professionnelle de Mecanique . 

ficole Professionnelle d'Armurerie et de Petite 

M6canique 



Amsterdam 



Rotterdam 
Antwerp 

Heverle 
Brussels 



Liege 



62 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 



Ecole Industrielle et Commerciale 

Ecole Professionnelle des Metaux 

Ecole Professionnelle du Batiment 

ficole Industrielle et Professionnelle 

ficole pour Jeunes Filles 

]Scole Superieure des Textiles 

Ecole Professionnelle, Industrielle, Superieure 



Ghent 



Morlanwelz 

Verviers 
Charleroi 



GERMANY. 

Kunstgewerbe- und Handwerkerschule 

Victoria-Fortbildungs-Schule 

Handels- und Gewerbeschule 

Obligat Gewerbliche Fortbildungsschule 

Biirgerschule 

Stadtische Gewerbeschule . 

Stadtische Gewerbeschule ( Schiilerinnen-Abteilung) 

Gewerbliche Fach-und Fortbildungsschule 

Fleischer-Innung . . . . 

Buchdruckereibesitzer-Innung 
Konditoren-Kreis-Innung 
Schornsteinfeger-Kreis-Innung 
des Vereins Dresdner Gastwirte 
Tapezierer-Innung . . . . 

Zeichnungsschule 

Konigliche Akademie fiir Graphische Kiinste und 
Buchgewcrbe 

Carola-Schule 

Stadtische Gewerbeschule und Maschincnbauschule 

Frauenarbeitschule und Arbeitslehrerinnen-Seminar 

Gewerbliche Fachliche Fortbildungsschulen 
Buchdrucker und Schriftsetzer 
Lithographen und Stein drucker 
Metallgiesser und Giirtler 



Cologne 

Berlin 

Potsdam 

Charlottenberg 

Dresden 



Leipsic 



Munich 



ENGLAND 



Dartmouth Home for Cripples 
East London Industrial School 



London 



63 



THE AMERICAN SITUATION 



THE UNITED STATES 

North Bennet Street Industrial School 
Union School of Salesmanship 
Sloyd Manual Training School 
Trade School for Girls 
EHot School .... 
Independent Industrial School 
Textile School 
Technical High School 
Manhattan Trade School for Girls 
Trade School for Boys 
Hebrew Technical Institute for Boys 

" Girls 
Pratt Institute 
Drexel Institute . 
Boardman High School 
Institute of Craft and Industry 
State Trade School 
State Trade School 
Co-operative Factory and Y. M. C. A 
Sigourney School 
Vacation Schools 



School 



Boston 



Newton 
New Bedford 
Springfield 
New York 



Brooklyn 
Philadelphia 
New Haven 
Waterbury 
New Britain 
Bridgeport 

Hartford 

Middletown 



Thanks are due for general letters of introduction to Dr. G. C. F. 
Williams, President Arthur T. Hadley, President Flavel S. Luther, 
Governor Frank B. Weeks and our foreign embassies and legations, and 
for personal letters to Professor Henry W. Farnam of New Haven, Dr. 
Robert Wuttke, Dr. Lyon and Dr. Roscher of Dresden, Dr. Georg 
Kerschensteiner of Munich, Dr. Francke and Dr. Kuhnow of Berlin, M. 
J. Stevens and M. Mabille of Brussels, Mr. Loring of London, and to the 
directors of the schools visited whose courteous help made the work of 
investigation so pleasant and easy. 



64 



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